South Mumbai residents protest against irregular water supply, suspect tanker mafia-administrators nexus

Local residents from South Mumbai on Tuesday continued their protest in Marine Drive against the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) regarding water supply that has been irregular for the past three months. According to reports, Cuffe Parade, Colaba and Churchgate are the worst hit in South Mumbai with the areas receiving very little water for the past three days.

Residents told News18 that they suspected a nexus between the water tanker mafia and the administration. On Monday, residents had protested outside the BMC office of A Ward carrying empty buckets. A meeting with the hydraulic engineer followed the protest, who assured the residents that the problem had been resolved. “Around 200 people turned up for the protest despite it being a working day. People from slums as well as plush localities came to protest. This itself shows the gravity of the situation. There was not a drop of water in Cuffe Parade for three days until Sunday. On Monday, the BMC resumed normal supply knowing about our protest,”  The Hindu quoted Colaba corporator Makarand Narvekar as saying. Ashok Kumar Tawadia, chief engineer of the BMC hydraulic department told DNA, “We had taken some work for improvement that affects water supply in many parts of city. But now work has been completed and supply issue is resolved.” Tawadia also stated that the issue was caused due to multiple reasons, “Multiple factors came together to cause issues in supply. We had taken up repairs to the Veravali reservoir in September, which affected supply lines going from Bhandup complex to western suburbs. We found air pockets in these pipelines, which prevented continuous flow of water. Besides, the pumps in one of our pumping stations tripped in the first week of October. There was another technical issue at Bhatsa reservoir. That is why supply was affected. There are no water cuts,” he told The Hindu.  Many parts of the city including Colaba, Cuffe Parade, Bhendi Bazaar areas in South Mumbai and Juhu, Khar, Andheri and Jogeshwari in the western suburbs reported water supply issues over the last two weeks. Earlier, the BMC had claimed that it hasn’t imposed any water cuts and blamed localised problems for the erratic supply, reported  Mumbai Mirror. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Raj Purohit on Friday told The Asian Age that the water scarcity in A Ward was due to a nexus between ward officials and water mafia.